On a weekend in late May, fashion editors, photographers, stylists and even supermodels, flew into Atlanta, Georgia, crowding the sprawling terrace at dusk at the Savannah College of Art and Design’s (SCAD) city outpost, settled to take in the school’s 2023 graduate showcase: a marathon runway show, opened by Coco Rocha, and boasting collections from the program’s 50 plus graduates. That’s a lot of fashion!
Much of the students’ four-year undergrad course was spent at-home, away from the school’s sprawling studio spaces, due to the pandemic. Rather than stifling creativity, though, quarantine spurred a series of deeply conceptual, introspective collections. Through them, the graduating class explored themes of identity, gender, sexuality, race, class and beyond. Each collection formed its own psycho-social map, a reflection not only of the designer’s interiority but of the larger world whose forces, equally, shape the intimate language of design. When taken in together, as they were at the sprawling graduate runway, the collections also make up a blueprint for a more promising future for today’s floundering fashion industry. One that champions sustainability, inclusivity and ingenuity, above all.
From the dozens of collections presented, we’ve selected ten standouts and sat down with the designers to talk about what went on the behind-the-scenes; how the collections came together, conceptually and physically; and where they see themselves post-graduation.
Bennett Moses
Orlando native Bennett Moses’ puffy silhouettes and all-over prints are quite the technical feat. (“I knew the shapes I wanted to achieve weren’t just going to come from blocks,” he says of cutting the collection’s inventive patterns). But take a closer look at the collection’s trippy surfaces and you’ll see there’s much more than meets the eye.
A response to his personal experiences with sexual discrimination — “being told I wasn’t human for being who I am, and loving who I love,” he says — Bennett’s graduate collection captures the very essence of being human. Literally. “On a biological level, our existence is defined by our DNA, RNA and chromosomes,” he says. “I pulled inspiration for silhouette and fabric from those motifs, translating them into colourful, playful garments, making something beautiful from a sentiment that was intended to hurt.”
But you won’t be needing a microscope to appreciate the designer’s intricate chromosomal patterns. Every inch of fabric in the three-look collection is covered in these custom patterns, created by Bennett and printed in Savannah’s Number Nine Labs, and they’re designed to be appreciated from up close and afar, to different effect.
Bryony Umfreville
Prior to moving stateside to attend SCAD, Bryony Umfreville grew up in the English town of Grays, located on the North shore of the River Thames. Her grandfather was an ex-Navy man; her father, a hobbyist fisherman. Through her graduate collection, Bryony honours both men, translating their seafaring lives and legacy into her own language — the language of clothes.
Naturally, the collection pays homage to the trappings of traditional naval uniform: the sailor suit with its collared Cracker Jack jumper and wide-legged trousers. However, these familiar tropes serve as both a foundation and a starting point for more ingenious statements. With a few tweaks in tailoring, an old-fashioned life vest becomes a rather fetching take on the puffer. Elsewhere, the seaman’s pea coat is lent a buoy-esque shape with curving back seams. “The flyaway threads reminded me of watching my dad [fishing], seeing how crazy the fly fishing lines can get,” Bryony reminisces, speaking to one of the smaller, more intimate details that elevate the garments from historic homage to artistic statement.
Hayden Yang
“We were like livestock,” says Seoul native Hayden Yang, referring to his youth spent within South Korea’s notoriously strict, fiercely competitive schooling system. It’s one, he recounts, that demanded all students to wear the same uniform and get the same haircut, but it’s also one that created “a clear hierarchy of power, oppression and violence among students,” he says.
Today, at SCAD, Hayden is oceans away from the schooling system that made him feel trapped “like a pig in a cage,” he says. And what better way to send off those destructive systems of power than to blow them to smithereens — or at least tear them apart. With his graduate collection, Hayden deconstructs the ever-powerful emblem of the school uniform, fashioning its clean-cut conventions as a canvas across which a new narrative takes shape. Blazers and kilts with jagged hemlines, collared shirts with yanked-down sleeves channel the subversive spirit of Thom Browne —and look like they’ve arrived from a match of schoolyard fisticuffs.
Most notably, across the collection, yards and yards of ruffled elastic abound from the obliterated shoulders of sports jackets, giving the effect of a house of cards collapsing in slow motion or rather, Hayden says, the innards of those caged pigs, disembowelled and on full display.
Anyssa Merlini
Growing up in the suburbs of New Jersey, Anyssa Merlini combatted her feelings of not belonging by escaping into the worlds of fairytales and fantasy books. Today, miles away at SCAD’s Savannah campus, Anyssa returns to those teenage touchstones, drawing upon their darkness as much as their light to craft a collection that celebrates outsider-dom. “I hope [these clothes] provide the wearer with a feeling that they stand out from the norm,” she says.
Indeed, billowing shirt dresses and corseted maxi skirts cascade into smatterings of tulle and tattered hemlines, perhaps telling the story of a maiden who’s made it through the woods — or the witch who resides in them. Crocheted paracord details — a shoulder, a smock — provide a narrative throughline, says Anyssa. “I also used it to tie and drape fabric in interesting ways to represent feeling tied down by my reality versus trying to break free into fantasy.”
Fairytale wasn’t the only yarn Anyssa was interested in unravelling with her graduate collection. As president of SCAD’s Slow Fashion Club, sustainability was also top of mind for the designer, who used deadstock fabric throughout the collection. A deconstructed trench coat, the collection’s ingenious final look, best embodies these themes. “I created [the] trench coat by sandwiching my fabric scraps between fabric, which I then slashed to expose all the layers,” she says. “For me, this was an exciting way to reduce waste, while speaking to the balance between wildness and freedom in a traditional garment.”
Nathan Batra
Before enrolling in SCAD’s BFA fashion program, Nathan Batra had been en route to becoming a medical practitioner. For his graduate collection, Nathan dipped a toe back into this “past life”, dusting off and cracking open his medical textbooks to explore, this time, the aesthetic value of brain scans, cartilage structures, x-rays and, particularly, bones. “Bones are strong but also fragile,” he explains. “I wanted to showcase that through textiles.”
Nathan arrived upon the collection’s unique, sculptural silhouettes through textile manipulations, using laser-cutting, silicone moulding, and UV printing to lend featherlight fabrics the delicate structure and weight of a human skeleton.”The UV printing is especially interesting,” he says. “It’s a unique printing method that deposits ink in layers and, as the layers build up, it causes the fabric to become rigid. It took a year to develop this method for printing directly on fabric and, with this, I could create sculptural pieces just by using the rigidity from the printing.”
Maliki Gilbert
Inspired by sci-fi opuses like Blade Runner and Ghost in the Shell, Maliki Gilbert’s graduate collection whisks us away to a cybernetic future where three species — metahumans, haliens and cyborgs — commingle and signal their affiliation via fashion. Maliki’s year-2222 haliens (human aliens) are recognizable vis-àvis their affinity for AI-generated prints, kinetic bursts of blues and oranges, which twist their way around 3D printed spikes, inspired by burgeoning biohacking technologies. Elsewhere, cyborgs are decorated in flashes of LED and holographic accessories.
The collection’s pièce de résistance, a silicon human torso suit, was actually ready-made; the sustainably-minded designer salvaged the piece, simply cutting through the centre and adding a zipper to transform it into a jacket — an ingenious and avant-garde disguise for a cyborg robot posing as a human.
Torrion Reed
With his graduate collection, designer Torrion Reed realises his dream of a society where a full-denim wardrobe is mandatory. The entire collection — patchworked hoodies, jeans and jackets — was created using recycled jeans sourced from various Goodwill locations around Savannah and his hometown of Rock Hill, South Carolina.
In fact, a summer spent with family in Rock Hill inspired the smaller stylistic details that elevate the collection beyond its denim origins. “Being back at home and spending time with them brought back a lot of childhood memories,” he says. The collection tells the story of Torrion’s upbringing. Its oversized silhouettes, he tells me, were inspired by the kinds of clothes he wore as a kid. The fishing net, which wraps its way across the deconstructed denim separates, is a nod to the state’s massive fishing culture.
Garren Hayes
“I wanted to address the boxes men get put into when they dress,” says Garren Hayes, whose subversively opulent menswear collection plays with the strict conventions and expectations surrounding masculine dress. “A man should have the freedom to dress and express himself as he pleases,” he says. “A man wearing a corset or a lace blouse or carrying a purse doesn’t affect his masculinity, sexuality or who he is on the inside. It’s just what he wants to wear.”
Garren’s graduate collection draws inspiration from bridal and formalwear, which, according to him, represent a level of elegance and celebration unseen in traditional menswear. A rugged men’s singlet oozes this heightened sense of elegance, literally, as its cotton construction drips into a cascade of sheer, gauzy lace. An intricately-rendere corseted suit also delivers all the drama of an evening gown. With his suiting, Garret wanted to exaggerate the male silhouettes, cinching the waist and broadening the shoulders to give the torso a more triangular shape. “This is something commonly associated with a strong male figure, but I’m creating this shape through something seen as ‘feminine,’” he says of the collection’s layered and subversive take on gendered dress.
Megan Smith
“More than anything, [creating this collection] was a process in coming back home to myself,” says Orlando native Megan Smith, whose graduate collection ‘Bondage + Bandages’ is a sartorial embodiment of the ways we carry our grievances with us throughout our lives. The collection’s leitmotif, the bone-white harnessing and corsetry overlays, which were constructed from coffee-dyed cotton coutil, steel spring and spiral boning, symbolise the walls we put up to protect ourselves, which, in the end only serve to restrain us.
The collection’s dark underlayer — tailored trousers, pleated skirts and puff-sleeved blouses in a palette of black — represent the undercurrents of the subconscious self. Despite providing the background to Megan’s centre-stage corsetry, it’s some of these pieces that actually best showcase the designer’s meticulous craftsmanship.” For example, compared to the “pretty standard” corsetry, Megan tells me, the collection’s black smocked crop top was “a little bit more complicated.” To bring the piece to life, the designer came up with her own smocking technique, running pleated fabric through her sewing machine to create random waved stitches across the pleats, then gathering and manoeuvring the fabric to lay flat to create the trippy-looking end-result.
“It’s one of those details that you almost need to see up close to really understand, but I think that only goes to represent my concept further. Some of the most intricate grievances we carry need to be examined up close and head on to understand fully,” she says. “Otherwise, so much is lost in overlooking those fine details.
Alberto Perkinson
With his graduate collection, designer Alberto Perkinson presented the crowd at SCAD’s fashion showcase with an epic of Dante-esque proportions in four looks. Its winding narrative follows a woman’s journey through the turbulent waters of a love lost, as she grapples with regret, immerses herself in the depths of delusion, writes unsent love letters and, finally, breaks free. “The transformative act of repurposing garments and engaging in fabric manipulations becomes a tangible representation of her emotional journey,” Alberto says. “Symbolising her resilience and the cathartic release of her pent-up emotions.”
Indeed, the collection’s theatrical garments spiral with Alberto’s protagonist. A gorgeous, floor length gown is crafted entirely from 40 thrifted men’s ties, which snake themselves around the body. Elsewhere, men’s tailcoats meet bridal tulle and corsetry in a look that speaks to visions of what could have been. The narrative culminates in the collection’s spectacular finale look, a white gown created from torn-and-mended pieces of men’s shirting, its train decorated in Alberto’s personal collection of vintage love letters. “To preserve the delicate paper letters, I used contact cement to attach them to a cotton sateen shirt,” he explains, adding. “Sewing would have torn them apart.”